


A Moment

by Lauryn426



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29208504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauryn426/pseuds/Lauryn426
Summary: Sirius and Hermione share a moment in the garden of Grimmauld Place, and Sirius finds out that Hermione isn't quite who Harry thinks she is.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

Twelve Grimmauld Place was once a beautiful house. Hermione could see the way that it had once been classically decorated and could almost hear her mum whimpering at the state it was in now. Mrs Weasley had shrieked when she’d seen it and exploded at Sirius that this was no way for children to live. Sirius had insolently smirked at her and asked what she was going to do about it, then?

The answer to that was to clean it herself. When that had seemed too insurmountable a task, she’d drafted all the children living there to help, which is how Hermione had found herself in the attic. She didn’t understand why - surely Mrs Weasley would want to start with the rooms people were actually going to use? It didn’t matter what she thought she supposed, but Hermione did like the satisfaction of starting at the top and working her way down. If only she could take before and after pictures, that would be true satisfaction.

It was difficult for everyone to live at Grimmauld Place because it truly was as the name suggested - a grim old place. It was necessary, though and Hermione was just thankful that it was bigger than the Burrow - at least everyone could have their own rooms. Molly still seemed adamant that her children should double up and share rooms but the only ones who did were the twins. Sirius had been determined that the children be as comfortable as possible in the house, however wretched it was, and it seemed he’d got his way.

He was especially firm that Hermione got one of the best rooms, and when questioned why would only reply that she’d saved his life. Hermione had gotten a few looks for that - most people in the Order weren’t aware of the time-travelling adventure she’d dragged Harry on at the end of their third year. She’d even forgotten about it in the panic of the previous year until she’d walked into a room and Buckbeak was there.

She decided that someone else could have the honour of cleaning that room.

There had been a routine established within a week or so, where Hermione and the rest of the Weasleys would methodically go through rooms and clean them as best they could until Mrs Weasley called them for dinner. There, Mrs Weasley and Sirius would snipe at one another throughout the meal with the rest watching in awkward silence, no one wanting to risk the wrath of either adult. Privately, Hermione thought Sirius was right about some things, and she could tell Fred and George did too. Ron and Ginny, it seemed, were too scared to even think that their mother could be wrong.

Hermione couldn’t imagine how awful it must be for Sirius to be stuck living in his childhood home. She didn’t know much about him, but she did know that he’d moved to the Potters by the time he was sixteen, and that didn’t speak to a happy childhood. She spent some time with him, mostly when she wanted some quiet time to read in the library and Sirius wanted some quiet time to drink away from Mrs Weasley screeching that he was setting a bad example for the children.

Because drinking was the worst thing they’d ever seen, Hermione thought sarcastically.

It wasn’t until there was a rare sunny day that Hermione had decided to explore the garden that she and Sirius actually talked to each other. Hermione had taken a break from Mrs Weasley’s cleaning schedule that had been imposed on all the children and had snuck a book out of the library. 

It was a nice enough day for reading outside.

Sirius had taken advantage of the rare sunny day to nip out to the garden for a cig. He felt ridiculous sneaking out of his own house for a cigarette but knew that the trouble and lectures Molly would spout at him weren’t worth the risk of being seen.

Still, it was his house and he knew all the little hiding spots in it. It was why he was sat on a worn down bench. He could almost hear his mother clamouring as she always used to, that it was just wonderful how it was in a position where you could see everything but no one could see you. He was sure that she’d used it to her advantage at the many garden parties she used to throw - all the better for gathering blackmail and keeping up to date with the gossip.

He wasn’t using it for anything as nefarious, just as a way to make sure no one was going to sneak up on him, especially if they were Molly Weasley - he’d had more than enough of her screeching at him. Sirius just wanted a moment of peace to himself.

As much as he didn’t mind the Weasley’s living at his house, it had been a while since he’d had any human interaction, and he just wasn’t prepared to be around large and boisterous groups again. And the Weasleys were certainly a large and boisterous group. He had no idea how the kids had managed to cope with each other growing up, especially when he considered that he only had four of the seven kids under his roof. 

It must have been a nightmare for them.

“Sirius?” Hermione’s voice interrupted the solitude. She wasn’t used to the Weasley’s either and had snuck off to the gardens for a bit of quiet to read books that weren’t necessarily dark, but weren’t really light either. She was certain that if the Weasleys bothered to look at what she was reading they certainly wouldn’t approve of it.

Sirius’ head jerked at Hermione’s approach. He hadn’t heard, or saw, her coming. Strangely he didn’t mind the interruption by Hermione; he held a level of respect for her. Not only had she saved his life - his soul - a few years ago but he’d also seen how she’d supported Harry through the tournament. Harry hadn’t said anything but Sirius also suspected that she’d supported him through the first years of school too.

“Afternoon, kitten,” he smirked at her, his voice a little raspy from the cigarette he’d got out of the habit of smoking. He thought she’d disapprove of the smoking, as he’d heard from Harry and Ron that she was a bit of a stickler for the rules. She reminded him a bit of Lily in that sense, and how stubborn she was. Lily was stubborn as a mule, and it seemed like Hermione was just as stubborn when it came to affronts to her morals.

Hermione was stubborn - she’d be the first to admit it. It was a habit from years of being right and always knowing the right answer. Maybe it was a bad habit. Her morals, however, had recently grown a bit flexible. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew what the murder of Cedric at the end of the tournament meant. Knew that the resurgence of the Order of the Phoenix meant.

It meant war was coming.

So her morals had to be bent a bit. There was no use sending tickling hexes at death eaters who’d be sending killing curses at them. It was why she was glad to be at Grimmauld, even though the house itself was worn out and disgusting in places, the library was immense. It had books she’d never be able to access at Hogwarts; too dark even for the restricted section of the library.

“Busy researching?” He asked, his head nodding towards the book in Hermione’s grasp. He recognised it as one from the library, and not a particularly light one, either. Sirius wondered if Hermione would admit to reading something that most of the Order would see as unsuitable material for a teenage girl.

“Yeah, I’m doing a bit of researching.” She didn’t clarify anything, like what she was researching. Sirius knew she was smart. She wouldn’t admit anything if she thought it would get her into trouble. She’d answered his question and didn’t offer anything more.

Sirius tapped the packet of cigarettes and his eyes gleamed with amusement as he asked, “fancy a cig, kitten?” He was expecting a bit of a hissy fit, and maybe for her hair to puff up with her anger. He couldn’t help it; he was still a Marauder and wanted to do a bit of mischief to create a spectacle. It’s what the Marauders had been best at when they were in school.

He wasn’t expecting for her to shrug and hold her hand out for the packet. He wasn’t expecting her grunt of thanks when he obligingly passed it and a lighter. He definitely wasn’t expecting her to take her first drag smoothly, without coughing.

Apparently, Harry hadn’t seen this side of the bookworm. He stared at her and said, “wouldn’t have pegged you to smoke.” 

She smirked. “I don’t really. Only every so often. Suppose I’ll have to give it up at Hogwarts.” Hermione knew the rules backwards and forwards and there wasn’t a specific rule forbidding smoking but she couldn’t imagine Professor McGonagall being happy with her if she was caught. But surely Sirius would know a way around that and she waited for him to offer.

“Nah. We used to go down to the bits of the school that no one uses. There was a bathroom on the second floor that the girls didn’t use, and that was alright for sneaking off for a quick smoke. Nearly got caught by Filch a few times, though. Just got to remember to get rid of the smell after.” He spoke nonchalantly, with a distant smile. He was remembering the good times they had, and those were hard to remember nowadays.

Especially because those memories were tainted by the traitor. Peter hadn’t liked the smell of smoke, so never went with him, James and Remus when they’d sneak off.

“Oh, Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom?” Hermione asked. “I don’t think I’ll use it, I’ve spent enough time there to last me a lifetime. And Dumbledore might keep an eye on it; it’s the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.” She spoke casually like it was common knowledge.

It might have been for all Sirius knew, but it wasn’t to him. “The Chamber of Secrets? That’s real?”

She looked at him like he was an idiot. “Well, yeah. Hasn’t Harry told you about his first and second year? I couldn’t really tell you much, I was petrified for most of second year.” Hermione was relaxed as she brought it up.

Sirius was gobsmacked. The only thing that he knew that could petrify someone was a basilisk, and surely there wasn’t one of those in Hogwarts, that would be ridiculous, it was a school! When he voiced this, Hermione shrugged and replied, her voice hard, “you wouldn’t believe how much goes on in that school.”

This was a very different Hermione to what Harry had told him. She was almost disapproving of the school - according to Harry that was worse than blasphemy to Hermione. Prim and proper Hermione who’s uniform was exact to the measurements in the rules, who’s work was impeccable, who’d always been the kind of girl to listen to the rules and teachers. 

This Hermione, stood in his back garden, stubbing out a cigarette under her heel while gesturing to Sirius for another was not that girl. He gave her another cigarette and took one for himself. “You’re not like they say you are, you know?” He asked her, gesturing to the house to point out the Weasleys.

She snorted. “They only see me behind a book. I don’t spend all my time in the library, they just think I do.”

He barked out a laugh and wiggled his eyebrows, “you spending your time in broom closets, then?” He laughed harder when she blushed. “I’ll take that as a yes. They really have no idea?”

“Ronald only noticed I was a girl last year, when he needed a date to the Yule Ball.” Hermione’s lips had pursed and Sirius could kind of see the Hermione that Harry did. “He didn’t believe that I already had a date.”

Sirius leaned towards her, always happy to know a bit of gossip. “Who was it then? Your date?” He asked.

“Oh, you might not know him,” she answered, a teasing glint in her eyes. “Viktor Krum?” She said and it was a question of if he knew who Viktor Krum was. She knew it was a stupid one - Harry had told her that Sirius had complained to him that he hadn’t been able to get tickets to the Quidditch World Cup and that he’d really wanted to go.

He nearly fell off the bench in his shock, pivoting to fully face her. “The Bulgarian seeker? Viktor Krum?” Moving suddenly on the wooden bench turned out to be a bad idea for him, as with a sickening crack, it collapsed. Sirius blinked and found himself sitting on the muddy ground, nearly kneeing himself in the face. He turned to look at Hermione who was choking on the cigarette smoke as she tried to not laugh at him.

Sirius waved his hand, “go on, then, laugh, you’ll only hurt yourself trying not to.” It was funny, he’d admit that. Only when his coccyx stopped throbbing, though. Hermione let out loud peals of laughter and Sirius joined in, still sprawled on the ground.

Their joined mirth was a little too loud, though because a few moments later, Mrs Wealsey’s voice rang out over the garden. “Hermione, dear, are you out here?” Hermione’s eyes went wide with panic as she glanced at her still lit cigarette and then around the garden for Mrs Weasley. Sirius took pity, and grabbed it out of her hand so that if Molly found them, he would be the one getting the bollocking, first for smoking and then for smoking around impressionable young minds.

He glanced at Hermione and thought ‘impressionable young mind, my arse’.


	2. Chapter 2

They kept meeting in the garden as the weeks passed, both growing increasingly annoyed that Harry still hadn’t been brought to join them at Grimmauld Place. They talked more, too. Not just about Harry and the Order and the coming war.

They talked about what it was like growing up for each of them; Sirius being brought up in a rigid, pureblood House where he learnt all the customs and intricacies of wizarding culture, and Hermione being brought up in a no doubt loving but not fully understanding home. 

Hermione told Sirius about how her parents had enrolled her in all sorts of hobbies as a child, hoping one would stick so she wouldn’t have her head in a book forever. She told him about the disastrous few ice skating lessons she took, both laughing at her retelling of falling immediately on her arse every time she stepped on the rink. Hermione had liked ballet, though, and the gymnastics lessons she was enrolled in. She’d kept it up until she’d gone to Hogwarts, and then she joked that it’s a bit difficult to go to semi-weekly dancing and gymnastics lessons in London when you’re at a boarding school in Scotland.

Sirius, in turn, told her how he’d had to learn the history of the Black family and could name every relative back to somewhere in the 1500s. Why his mother thought that would ever be useful Sirius never knew. He told her about learning the names of constellations and stars and when they’d met past midnight, he spent hours pointing them out to her. Telling her the myths and stories behind them, and where he could, told her about his family members named after them.

He had a big family, and they’d all been close when they were younger. He told her about the days he spent playing with Bellatrix, Narcissa and Andromeda, his cousins. Sirius explained that the only one of them he’d seen recently was Bellatrix, and that was because his cell in Azkaban was in the same wing as hers. Andromeda had been disowned just after she’d graduated from Hogwarts; she married a muggleborn and that was unacceptable to his family. 

He was sorrowful when he talked about them, especially Bellatrix. She was a bad person, he explained. But there was a time when she was just his older cousin who’d play games of make-believe with him when they were just kids. They were still just kids when she’d got caught up with all that death eater shite, he told her, earnestly. They’d just been raised with arrogance and bigotry and she’d never been able to see anything outside of it.

He didn’t tell her about Regulus.

Hermione told him that she was an only child, but that every summer, ever since she could remember, her parents would take her to visit her cousins in France. They were like sisters to her, rather than cousins. They were the ones who’d first given her a cigarette to try, away from their parents’ eyes. She told him that they were the first to get her drunk, and that she hadn’t got to see them this summer and that she missed them. For the first time since she was born, her parents were going to France without her and didn’t even have an explanation why.

Sirius only spoke a bit about the Marauders, but he told her about some of their more outrageous pranks. Told her about his and James’ quidditch victories, to which she rolled her eyes. And then he talked about the wild parties they’d have after. “It was the sixties, Hermione and even wizards were wanting to let loose.” He spoke about sneaking cigarettes into Hogwarts, and then muggle alcohol. He told her that they’d even managed to sneak in weed, and acid once. She laughed when he told her that it was the weirdest experience of his life because James had had a bad reaction and turned into Prongs. Sirius nearly cried laughing at the memory of the four of them high out of their minds, running after a stag in their dorm room.

They spoke about Harry, and how they worried that his aunt and uncle were mistreating him. How Dumbledore didn’t seem to care, as long as the blood wards were upkeeped. “But the thing is,” Hermione told Sirius, “you have a lot of books on wards in your family library, did you know? And they all say that a blood ward is useless if someone has your blood. I looked up the ritual that he used, as best I could. Don’t know why I bothered, really. Harry told me that he used his blood in the ritual.”

Sirius looked at her with a grave expression. “So what you’re telling me is that Harry is at his aunt’s with no protection except whoever the Order sticks on him?”

Hermione nodded. There was nothing else to say - it was clear to both of them that Harry, like everyone else, was just another cog in Dumbledore’s machine. It was a metaphor they’d used before, and a thought came to Hermione. “Dumbledore’s keeping him there for nothing, and with no protection.” She dismissed the so-called guard that was set by the Order and she didn’t have to listen to their meetings to know that they weren’t doing anything. Half the time they didn’t show up.

“Why don’t we remove a cog from the machine of the greater good?” Hermione slyly suggested.

Sirius quirked an eyebrow in an unasked question: how?


End file.
